Medical imaging often includes creating images and/or video sequences of the human body or parts of the human body for clinical purposes such as examination, diagnosis and/or treatment. These images may be acquired by a number of different imaging modalities including, for example, ultrasound (US), magnetic resonance (MR), positron emission tomography (PET), computed tomography (CT), mammograms (MG) digital radiology (DR), computed radiology (CR) or the like. In a number of example medical imaging workflows, such as in the case of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS), an image study for a patient may include one or more acquired images of the patient along with information that may reside with or otherwise accompany the images. This information may include, for example, a study identifier (ID) as well as patient information such as the patient's name, demographics, medical record number or the like.
Once a patient study has been created, the study may be stored in a database of a central storage device for later retrieval by a workstation where the study may be reviewed by a medical professional such as a radiologist who may make one or more diagnoses or other assessments of the patient from the study, and record those diagnoses or other assessments in a text-based report. This report may then be stored in an information system such as a hospital information system (HIS), radiology information system (RIS) or the like, where the report may be linked or otherwise associated with the image study such as by study ID, patient name, medical record number or the like.